


Backstage Pass

by katwithallergies



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Broadway RPF, Wicked RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katwithallergies/pseuds/katwithallergies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High-school senior Kris takes a job as a backstage dresser on touring shows to fund his Broadway habit.  He has no idea what he's in for.<br/>"Kris ducked through the curtain after Adam and ran smack into the man’s naked ass where he’d dropped his pants just inside the door. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backstage Pass

**Author's Note:**

> This is fiction, it never happened. However, Kris and Adam were roughly the right ages and in the right places at the right times to make this disturbingly plausible. The depiction of the backstage workings of a touring Broadway show is accurate from my experiences as a dresser on many shows.
> 
> This is an older fic that I really just wrote for a friend, never intending to post, so it may be little rough in some places. All grammatical and other mistakes are my own; I apologize ahead of time.

When Kris found out that the Robinson Center in Little Rock was going to start hosting touring Broadway musicals he was ecstatic. He quickly burned through all his birthday money on tickets and gas driving to the city to see _The Color Purple_ and _Cats_ and _Mamma Mia_ (twice).  Which left him with a dilemma: He was too involved with church, choir, and band to hold a real job, and any job he might get stood the risk of making him work on show night, thereby defeating the point. 

On the other hand, the idea of sitting at the Dairy Queen in Conway, wasting another Friday night away, when a show was happening down in Little Rock made his skin crawl.  The answer came in the form of an email from the Robinson Center's listserv: " _Dressers, Stagehands, and Etc. needed to work backstage during touring shows.  Hours and pay variable.  Must be able to show up on time and work hard_."

Kris worked out that for every show he worked he could attend at least three performances.  He picked Wicked as his first show to work partially because he had already seen it and partly because The Lion King was coming into town next and there was no way he was missing it.

The man on the phone had sounded confident, telling him to be there an hour and a half before show time, dress in all black and be sure he had a penlight.  "You'll do fine, it's really no big deal.  We're glad to have you!"  The scene when Kris arrived at the big back doors off the loading dock was a different story.  People were running everywhere, mostly clothed in black like him, shouting and thrusting papers and rolls of tape at one another.

"Are you Kris?" shouted a man from inside an office.  Kris leaned forward to get a better look and make sure the man was talking to him.  He seemed to be; Kris nodded.  "Oh, thank god!"  He stood up and came outside to clap Kris on the shoulder firmly.  "You can fill out your paperwork later.  Come on, let’s get you to Melissa."  Kris felt even smaller than usual, with the man's firm hand propelling him deeper into the back of the theatre.

"You're not late or anything," he led Kris past a string of rooms where people were singing, clearly warming-up, "things have just changed."  A woman walked by in a pink bathrobe, flapping open around her legs, and a man in spandex under shorts passed the other way shouting if anyone had seen his striped socks.

They crossed from the well-lit hallway into the backstage which was dim and crowded with stage hands doings set change run-throughs.  The entire stage right wall was filled floor to ceiling with an elaborate system of counter-weighted ropes and pulleys. Men walked beside them, working in sync to fly the large backdrops in and out of sight. 

A clump of large rolling wardrobes were parked haphazardly by the back wall and a harried looking woman with a headset radio was standing by them, apparently shouting at someone over the radio, unless the was talking to herself.  The man waved and got her attention.

"Is this him?" she asked.

"Yes, this is Kris. Kris, Melissa is the wardrobe manager with the tour; you’ll be working under her." Melissa shook his hand and immediately handed him a small bound notebook on a lanyard.  "Melissa will tell you everything you need to know.  Normally since you're a first timer we'd have you doing ensemble," he gestured to a long row of chairs and a dozen more of the rolling closets behind the back curtain, "but one of our veterans called in sick and no one else could come through.  We hired a girl today to replace her, but she says she isn't comfortable dressing men," he made a face. "You're fine with dressing men, right?"  Kris looked in between the man, whose name he still didn't know, and Melissa who looked like she might actually hurt him if he said no.  Kris said "sure." He said "no problem."  He had no idea.

***

"This is your track.  It’s your instructions," Melissa pointed at the notebook. "Do everything it says on there and you'll be fine.  You're dressing the male lead tonight and this gondola is his-" she rapped on one of the rolling closets "-so that means it's your responsibility." She waved him through a split black curtain into a little cubicle, just taller than Kris' head, made by angling two of the gondolas together and stringing a sheet across the opening.  It contained a single chair and just enough room for two adults to stand comfortably.

"Everything you need should be here, it's really self-explanatory as long as you do everything on the sheet," she rifled through the rack of clothes in the gondola as if she were checking things.  "Read the list for your next change, pull the clothes it says off the hangars and put them on the chair in the order you'd get dressed -- you know, pants on top, jacket on the bottom -- shoes under the chair, hat beside the chair upside down with the accessories inside." Kris wished he had a pen to write all this down.

"He'll come off stage and come straight here.  You help him get out of what he's got on and back into the new stuff, then you hang up what he took off and lay out the next change. Got it?" She took his faintly terrified stare for an affirmation.  "The stuff in red is things you'll have to leave your station for.  So if it says _'Take the red vest and the sunglasses USL and wait for him to come to you, then help him in to them'_ then that's what you do, see?" She did a suspicious double take, "You know what up stage left means, don't you?"  Kris nodded frantically, glad to finally get something right.

"All right, just, follow the track and don't leave anything out.  Oh, and make sure you refill his water bottle if he empties it!  He'll probably be by in a few minutes to talk to you, but you should go ahead and start laying out his--" there was a faint crackle of distant voices and Melissa's eyes drifted up and to the left.  "For god sakes tell them not to touch anything! I'll be right there." She looked at Kris, seeming surprised to find him still standing, looking at her.  "Gotta go.  Read your track, do what it says!" she shouted as she ducked back out the curtain and disappeared.

***

Kris found the right boots and shirt and suspenders with only a couple of issues, it helped that most of them were labeled on the tag with the scene number.  He was derailed, however, by trying to decide which of the three off-white-ish sets of pants were probably meant by _'crème crop trousers with military buttons.'_

"It's the ones in your left hand." Kris jumped and turned to see a tall man looking over the curtain into the changing area.  "I know that track isn’t nearly as helpful as Melissa thinks."  Kris gave him an appreciative nod and unclipped the pants from their hanger.  The man ducked through the curtain, suddenly making Kris aware of how small the cubicle was.  "I'm Adam," he stuck out his hand and Kris shook it mutely.  "And you are...?"

"Kris," he said quickly.  "Sorry." No one else had seemed to expect him to talk, he realized.

"It's cool," Adam looked over the clothes Kris had laid out and then angled past him to get a look in the gondola.  "Have you done this before?"

"Nah.  First time."  Kris noticed the scattering of freckles on Adam's arm where it passed under the little light inside the gondola.  He had to bend a bit to see into the gondola and his bicep grazed Kris' shoulder as he tugged the pants away from him.

"No worries, I'm not a bitch about my clothes, or anything."  He straightened and shook his dark hair out of his eyes.  "Just ask me if you have any questions and I'll let you know if I need anything, cool?" He clapped Kris on the shoulder and this time the broad hand swallowing up his arm felt comforting.

"Yeah. Thanks," he grinned and felt himself relaxing, Adam returned an open smile that made his eyes krinkle up.

"Awesome.  I'll be back about five minute till show time.  Good show!" he said and left humming.

_Great_ , Kris thought.  _They would give me the best looking guy in the show_.  Granted he hadn't seen the rest of them yet, but he was pretty sure Adam had to be it.

***

Adam was back, true to his word, just after the stage manager made the five minute call.  Kris was relieved to find him considerably less attractive than he had before. Of course, that might have a lot to do with the funny pants that cinched below his knee and fuzzy pink bathrobe he was sporting over matching fuzzy pink slippers.  There was also something that looked like a flesh colored Q-tip --Kris guessed that it was a microphone-- taped to the side of his face.

“Ready to go?” Adam asked.  He tossed the robe over one of the gondolas and Kris quickly retracted him previous thought re:hottness.  Even with the pants and slippers and a mic pack the size of a deck of cards suspended by an elastic band around his chest, Adam was undoubtedly the hottest person he’d ever seen shirtless.  Kris thought, _This is the dumbest thing I have ever done._

“You okay?” Adam’s hand was on Kris’ shoulder again.  He looked at it.  “You nervous?  It’s okay, you’ll do fine.”

“Heh,” he moved away to shake out the shirt and vest he’d laid out.  “I’m not the one who has to go out there in front of all those people.  Why are you the one talking me down?”

“I don’t really get nervous,” he shrugged.  “It’s awesome, being out there.”  The notes of the opening music came loud through the monitors and made Kris jump.  “Just wish I didn’t have to wait half an hour for my first entrance.”  He started buttoning up the white button down Kris had pulled out.  “Have you found the clothes for the quick change in scene 1.8?”

“These are them, right?” Kris pointed to the hangers he’d set aside.  “Pants, waist coat, jacket, black boots?”

“The other waist coat, but otherwise, yeah.”  Adam started rolling his sleeves up.  “I’ll actually be coming back here for it, but we only have two and a half minutes between my entrance and exit.  You need to have the pants on the floor in front of the chair, so I come in, ditch my pants, sit, you help me get the boots off, and I can step straight into the new pants, see?  I’ll have gotten the vest off by the time I get here, but I need you to button up the waistcoat while I get my pants done up and put on the new boots, then I’ll grab the jacket and be off.”

“I think I can do that...” In truth, Kris’ mind got stuck somewhere back when Adam said something about pants. 

“You’ll be great, two and a half minutes is longer than it sounds.”  He stood and shoved his feet into tall brown boots, picked up a satchel, and slung the vest over his shoulder.  “I’ve got to check in with makeup, see you soon.”  He flashed that killer smile on his way out the flap and Kris felt something in his stomach twist pleasantly.

***

Working as a dresser was a mostly long stretches of boredom interrupted with moments of sheer terror, Kris was realizing.  Fortunately, because Adam was a lead he had a prime spot for changing.  Kris could stand just outside the flap of the dressing area and see right through the upstage right wing onto the stage. 

Kris couldn’t hear the actors’ actual voices, even from this distance, instead hearing everything being piped through the monitors.  It somehow made it less real.  Even though he was so close that he could see the sweat rolling down the back of Boq’s neck, without being able to see their faces it seemed like it might all be lip synced. 

Maybe being backstage took some of the magic out of it, but if it did it put something different back.  The energy backstage was electric and the actors came in and out of the wings glowing with it.  It seeped into everyone and Kris felt a little thrill with every perfectly timed number and set change. 

Too soon, it seemed, he saw Adam making his entrance in a carriage from stage left.  He sprawled in the coach with his long legs flopped over the side and soaked up the audience’s laughter.  Kris watched, totally mesmerized, as he launched in his first big number.

***

Kris was caught off guard _(how did that happen? He was paying attention...)_ when Adam came barreling off stage, ripping apart the snaps on the jacket.  He was breathing hard and already pouring sweat.  Kris ducked through the curtain after him and ran smack into the man’s naked ass where he’d dropped his pants just inside the door.

“Oh!” Kris started, but Adam didn’t seem to notice, he was too busy kicking his feet free of the pants and dropping into the chair.  Kris tried to play it cool.  _No really, people get naked around me all the time.  Go right ahead._

“Help me get that one off,” Adam said, lifting one of the boots in Kris’ direction.  He wasn’t naked, Kris noted (even though he was NOT looking) as he dropped to the floor in front of the chair and tugged the boot off.  He was wearing some kind of skin tight, flesh colored thong.  So, technically not naked, but not leaving anything to the imagination, either.  ( _And boy, the places his imagination could go... but he WASN’T thinking about it.  WAS NOT.)_

They got the boots off and Adam put his feet through the pants and stood up to pull them up in just a few seconds.  He held out his arms one at a time for Kris to slip the waistcoat on and then Kris stepped around front to work at getting the snaps together.  As grateful as Kris was to someone for making the faux buttons actually snaps, he couldn’t get his fingers to stop shaking and cooperate and he was keenly aware of Adam looking down past him to do something with his pants.  His warm, quick breaths brushed the side of Kris’ face and the fringe of his hair tickled the top of Kris’ head. 

He finally got the snaps done and five seconds later Adam was gone.  He’d shoved his feet into new boots, snagged the red jacket off the back of the chair and whispered “thanks” before dashing directly back onto the stage, leaving Kris alone in the changing room with a lot of _feelings_ and nothing like professionalism.

***

“You sing really well,” he told Adam when he came back the next time.  “I mean, amazingly well.” He was working on a theory that if he made more small talk with Adam he’d see him more as a real, but unattainable, person and less as a naked, bronzed god.  Or something.

Adam tugged all his clothes off and collapsed into the chair, wiping away sweat with a towel.  “Really?  Thanks, man, I appreciate that,” he smiled and Kris smiled back, tightly, trying valiantly to keep his eyes on Adam’s face and not to watch the drop of sweat ( _that one right there..._ ) currently rolling down his chest toward that excuse for underwear Adam had on.  He snapped his eyes guiltily back up to Adam’s face and caught his eye; Adam arched one manicured eyebrow and Kris choked on a breath.

“Uhh, is this the right shirt?” Kris asked, desperately diverting the conversation.  “It... looks just like the other one to me.”

“Yeah, that’s it.  Their cuffs are different.”  He took the shirt and turned away. Kris studied the wet hair curling at the back of his neck, noticed the line of his mic wire coming out of the mic pack, taped between his shoulders, snaking around his neck and up behind his ear.  Adam held the shirt loosely in his hand but seemed unwilling to put on clothes until he absolutely had to. 

“We’ve got another quick change coming up.  It’s nothing big, just be waiting up stage left for me to come off. I’ll hand the prop I’m carrying to a stage hand, then turn around backward.  You just tug on the sleeves of the jacket and pull it off me, yeah?”  Kris nodded, _I’ll be there._  “I suppose I ought to get dressed,” he sighed and shook out the new pair of pants.

“I’ll just be… you know, if you need me,” Kris waved vaguely outside the curtain and ducked through to breathe the free air.  With Adam in there with him the changing area seemed tiny, completely dominated by Adam’s towering height and broad chest, and Kris felt like the open top was too far away.  He slid down to the concrete floor and sucked in a dry breath.

Ahead of him, in one of the wings just out of audience sight line, another dresser had laid out clothes on top of a sheet.  An actress rushed offstage and the dresser yanked apart the fastenings on the dress and immediately dropped it on to the sheet.  She stepped over the other dress and the dresser lifted it up and zipped the back: costume change in fifteen seconds flat.  Kris flipped through his track to see if he had anything like that coming. 

This was not what Kris signed up for. To be honest he wasn’t sure what he thought he was signing up for, but it wasn’t this.  He thought there would be more layers, buffers, between a regular guy like him and the real stars.  But no, here he was helping Adam off with his boots and running into his bare ass and -- _fuck_ \-- standing stage left, in full view of everyone backstage, helping Adam change pants during a quick change?  Kris re-read the directions. 

“ _Take the new pants USL and set them ready to put on on a drop cloth.  Wait for Adam to come to you.  Another dresser will be there to help you.  They will handle everything on top, you undo his pants and push them down, he’ll step into the new pair and you do them up.  Before he goes back out make sure: the jacket is off, the top three buttons of the shirt are undone, the sleeves are rolled up.”_

Kris was so fucked.

***

Kris didn’t see much of Adam for the rest of the first act.  He was there in the wings to strip the jacket off Adam when he came to him for the quick change, focused and beaming with the energy from the stage.  And he laid everything out for Adam’s next change but his track said that Adam would get himself dressed and he ought to go help dresser number seven with a women’s ensemble mass quick change, so he missed him then.  Instead, he was doing up dress laces and tucking in bra straps, giving him a chance to get his libido back in check.

Adam had two quick changes at the start of the second act. For no reason Kris could see, other than to make his life miserable, he changed pants and then a few minutes later changed back.  There was other stuff happening, too, shucking his jacket and rolling up the sleeves, but mostly Kris was worried about the pants because someone else would be doing upper-body.

He took the new pants and a cotton sheet up stage left and spread them out on the stage between two of the wing masking curtains just out of sight of the audience.  Melissa appeared to make sure he had things under control and left one of the women's ensemble dressers to help with the change.

From this close Kris could reach out and touch the actors on stage if he wanted.  They were dancing and singing just a few feet away and the lights glared down on everything and it was all too bright and too loud and too sweaty.  He felt himself getting washed away in the anxious euphoria of the performance.

Melissa came back to supervise and gave him a heads up before Adam came off stage, so this time he wasn't caught off guard.   Adam rushed into the wing, breathing like a freight train and pouring sweat, and stood on the sheet facing the stage with his arms held out.  While the ensemble dresser yanked down the jacket's zipper Kris fumbled with the fly of Adam's pants. He wasn't even thinking about the fact this this was _Adam_ whose crotch his hands were almost touching, he was just caught up in the performance nerves. He heard time ticking by away from them like sand through an hourglass, terrified he'd delay the show with his clumsiness.

The fly fell open finally, but Adam's legs were too sweaty for them to fall.  Kris skimmed them down with his thumbs, going to his knees to ease them over the boots.  Adam stepped over to the new pair of pants puddled on the sheet without even looking down and Kris, working on automatic, lifted the new pants up.

And there it was: the moment he's been waiting for.  Suddenly every fiber of Kris' body was keenly aware, all at once, that he was on his knees and his face was inches from Adam's dick. He realized he was panting, mouth slightly opened, and he could swear he could taste... something.  Kris snapped his mouth shut.

He zipped up the fly and chanced a glance up to see if Adam had noticed anything, but it looked like he was fully absorbed in unbuttoning the top three buttons of his shirt.  As he stuffed Adam’s shirt into his waistband Kris was hyper aware of every square inch of skin where the backs of this hands brushed over Adam's legs and dick.  He knew he was blushing like crazy and hoped he could blame it on the heat and adrenaline backstage.

"Okay," Melissa said, "watch out."  Kris scooped up the four corners of the sheet and ducked out of the wings while Adam took his co-star's hand and rushed back on stage.  "Right after this song we do it all again, backward."  Kris nodded.

Kris consciously tried to slow his breathing. His heart pounded loud in his ears and all the colors on stage seemed over saturated and run together.  Adam was kneeling with Elphaba down stage left, just out of wing 1 and they were launching into the big love song.

Adam faced Kris, maybe eight feet away, totally focused on the scene they were playing.  He stroked his hands over Elphaba's face and Kris felt his throat swell and seize shut.  He swallowed deliberately.

He knew that Adam was over-expressing so his emotion would read from the audience, but from here it looked like his heart was literally being pulled out of his chest.  His thickly outlined eyes cringed and widened and Kris tried to get himself under control, but there was no way in hell he was looking away right now.

It was ridiculous to get this worked up, Kris told himself... Yeah, he knew he was gay.  He liked rom-coms and musicals and, well, the gay porn was kind of a giveaway.  It wasn't like he was out, exactly, what with living in a tiny town in Arkansas and having _some_ sense of self preservation.  But still, he'd never even had a real relationship with a guy before and Adam, who was who-knows-how-much older and cooler and lived in hotel rooms was a pretty unlikely candidate.  Seriously, he might as well just let it go, so why couldn't he?

That was what he was wondering as onstage they leaned up to their knees to kiss.  And oh yeah, that right there was why.  From where he was Kris could see the way Adam's mouth missed hers and he was really sort of kissing the side of her face, but it thrummed something in him tight as a guitar string.  What he wouldn't give to have Adam do that to his neck.

There was more time for the second quick-change, so it was less frantic. Kris bit his lower lip tightly and told himself that he was _not_ going to be ridiculous and that seemed to do the trick.  Adam did up his own pants since he had the time, and that didn't hurt either.

***

Adam's last costume change was to get into his scarecrow costume. Kris pulled out a set of arm and leg sleeves with straw sewn around the cuffs and a tunic and pants.  He was sitting on the floor outside the changing area when Adam came back again.  Kris handed him his water bottle and Adam flashed him a grateful smile.

He ducked under the curtain rod and into the changing room and Kris followed him into the small space.

"Could you unzip this?" Adam asked, gesturing at the jacket.  He sat so Kris could reach the hooks at the neck and shrugged the thick garment onto the floor as soon as he was free.  "Ugh.  Thanks, that thing's awful."  He tilted his head back and chugged half the bottle of water, then started working on the buttons of his shirt.  "Are you having fun?" he asked Kris.

"Yes. A lot. This is amazing," Kris felt his face stretched by a smile.  "You guys are awesome."

Adam laughed softly, "I'm glad you think so.  Do you act?"

"A little. I'm involved with the drama group in my high school."

"You're in high school? I thought you were older." He sounded disappointed.

Kris was torn between being thrilled that Adam thought he was older and angry that he wasn't.  "Well, I'm almost nineteen, but I'm a senior in high school.  My parents kept me back a year in kindergarten because I was so small."

"Huh," Adam's eyes swept Kris from head to foot. "I never thought about someone being held back for that."

"Yeah, heh, well, you wouldn't," Kris teased.

"Hey, don't hate me because I'm tall."

"I'm not hating, definitely a little jealous though."

"I always feel like a freak around here anyway," Adam said, standing and starting to undo his pants.  "Most of the rest if the cast are little people like you."  As if to emphasize his point he watched someone walk by outside over the top of the gondolla.  Kris watched his eyes track their cross.

He turned his back to Kris, giving his an eye full of very tight, naked ass and thong.  Kris felt his face flush between one heart beat and the next and jerked his eyes away.  Adam (oblivious, thank god) dropped into the chair and sprawled out to let the sweat dry a little.  Kris thought about fleeing the tiny, overheated space, but everything he'd noticed from the other dressers seemed to say that he was supposed to stay at least until Adam was dressed.

He sat on the short wall at the open side of the gondolla and hoped it was dark enough that Adam wouldn't notice his red face or how interested certain other parts of his body were getting.

"What are you going to do when you graduate, Kris?  You going to go somewhere else or stay here?"

"I don't really know.  I've applied to a few colleges in Arkansas," he chewed on his lip and wondered whether he ought to tell Adam why he was so unenthusiastic about going to college in state.  It hadn't gone over well with his family, but Adam, of all people, might get it.  "What I really want to do is go to LA and play music."

"No kidding?" Adam flipped around on the chair, straddling the back of it.  Kris forces his eyes away from the crack between the seat and the back just in time to avert disaster.  Adam propped his chin in his hand, "So you want to make it big?"

"Everyone thinks it's crazy, though."

"Who cares about them, though? I mean, you've got to follow your dream, if that's your dream."  He said it like there was no other option.

"Was this your dream?" Kris asked, gesturing behind him to the stage.

"It was," Adam sighed.  "Now though, I have a new dream.  I mean, I still love this, obviously. I'm lucky to get to do it, but I really want to be a rock star.  I want to be like Bowie; I want to be up that in front of a crowd just letting it all out and singing my songs."

"I know exactly what you mean," Kris said, and he saw the same wistful, burning gleam of a musician in Adam's eyes.  "Except, you know, not so much like Bowie.  But look at you, you're half way there, right?"

Adam laughed, "No, not quite.  It's a big step from touring show to rock star.  But.  That's not going to stop me."  He smiled his impish grin and Kris had no doubt he would succeed.  One day Kris would be sitting in his living room in northern Arkansas watching Adam getting mobbed by screaming girls on TV and telling his family, "Yep, I met him once."

"You'll do it, too," Adam said.  Kris looked up and frowned.  "You will, I can tell.  You don't say much, but you fight for what you want. You just keep working at it until you succeed."

Kris smiled; it was a nice thing to say, even though Adam really didn't know him at all.  "Thanks."

"If you ever need a contact in LA look me up.  Even if I'm not there, I can put you in touch with people. For real," he sounded earnest, like he wouldn't take no for an answer.

"Wow, okay.  Thanks."  Kris stared into Adam's dark-rimmed eyes and thought for the first time: _maybe I really will make it._

"You're welcome.  Now, I need to become a scarecrow."

***

Kris stood in the wings and watched the end of the show.  He watched the actors do their curtain call to uproarious applause.  It was weird, this entire time he'd never seen the audience.

They came off stage whooping and dancing and shedding clothes.  He heard people talking about what club they'd go to tonight and calling out people to buy rounds.  Adam clapped Kris on the shoulder and his knees nearly collapsed, not from the force, just from the surprise and the energy of Adam's hand.

"Good show, Kris!"

"Good show!  You guys were awesome."  He took the clothes as Adam discarded them and put things back into the gondolla.  He felt almost jittery with success; he made it through the show without messing anything up or giving away his interest to Adam.

"Thanks for helping, you were great," Adam handed him his pants and boots.

"Thanks for being so nice.  I really enjoyed it."

"Hey, some of us are going out after the show," Adam was wrapped in his fuzzy robe again; he stood by Kris just a little too close.  Kris looked up at him sideways and wondered where this was going. He felt his heart speeding up again.  Stupid.  Adam probably just wanted advice on a good club.  "You want to come with?"  Kris' heart froze for a solid five seconds, he'd swear, and he gaped at Adam like a fish.  "No pressure," Adam smiled reassuringly.  "Just, you know, if you want to." His hand slid down Kris' shoulder to circle his back.  "It would be nice to have a local."

"I--" Kris tried to think what he should do.  What if Adam really just wanted a local opinion? What if he was just trying to be nice?  What if he wasn't?  "We could only go to places that let in eighteen-year-olds."

"That's fine. I'm sure you know a few."  He moved impossibly closer to Kris.  "Besides, we throw a pretty killer hotel room party, and I'm sure you can tell us where all the best after-midnight taco places are."

"Yeah..." Kris looked up at Adam, past the glare of the gondolla light. The strong curve of his jaw shadowed his face, but Kris could see his smile.  Suddenly he leaned down, his face just inches from Kris'.

"Normally I don't flirt with the dressers, and normally I wouldn't keep it up after someone is so clearly either not interested or naive, but I saw how interested you were earlier, and you're really, really cute, and I only get to know you for about twelve more hours."  His eyes were wide and honest and Kris could actually see his reflection in them. 

He bolstered himself and leaned up on his toes, a breath from Adam's mouth.  "Okay.  Let's make it a good twelve hours. Yeah?"


End file.
